Written by: Richard Hanania

Translated by: Block unicorn

The American right is keen on restoring manufacturing jobs. Long before Donald Trump's "Day of Liberation" tariffs, free trade was blamed for a range of issues, from children no longer playing outside to national vulnerability and America's strategic disadvantage relative to China.

However, these views are hardly supported by empirical data, and the ethical arguments behind trade protectionism are varied, some underdeveloped and others outright absurd. Despite the overwhelming consensus of common sense and economists, the unfounded arguments against trade persist, indicating that we need to understand that protecting manufacturing jobs from foreign competition is rooted in evolutionary psychology. Trade protectionism is a preference that manifests at the intersection of two very strong emotions: hostility towards foreign groups and an aesthetic preference for working with tangible goods.

Chris Caldwell recently criticized trade on the grounds that the concept of "the nation as a whole" is purely fictional. "The same policy may be seen as a windfall by one group and a disaster by another. Trade makes you an ally of certain foreigners and an adversary of some fellow Americans." Similarly, in "Conservatism: A Rediscovery," Yoram Hazony points out that free trade makes workers feel betrayed by government and business leaders, thereby "undermining the bonds of mutual loyalty."

These arguments, upon careful consideration, are difficult to justify. Regarding Caldwell's point that trade puts you on the same side as foreigners against Americans, one might ask: wouldn't restricting trade produce the same effect? If I want to buy a small part from a Chinese manufacturer at a lower price, and domestic trade protectionists prevent me from doing so, isn't that obstructing my goal? Caldwell's view treats a world without cross-border trade as a natural default state, suggesting that the flow of goods across borders "creates" a situation where Americans are pitted against each other. In fact, a world without trade can only be achieved through strong government measures, requiring the state to intervene and side with some Americans against others.

Hazony's argument also presents a strange ethical perspective. When group members make sacrifices, it is usually to help the whole. For example, a soldier may sacrifice in war to protect the nation from conquest. The "moral" argument against trade, however, reverses this notion. The welfare of the majority and the whole must be sacrificed for the benefit of a minority.

Even if we accept the necessity of redistribution, this argument only holds if the pro-trade position involves a transfer from the poor to the rich. Those who have much may sacrifice to help the poorest among us. The problem with this view is that tariffs, as a regressive tax, disproportionately affect goods that make up a larger share of low-income households' budgets (such as clothing, food, and appliances). A 25% tariff on imported washing machines will raise prices for everyone, but the burden on minimum-wage families is far greater than that on wealthy families. Research has found that Trump's tariffs in 2018 cost each household an additional $419 per year. High-income earners may not notice such costs, but they significantly impact the disposable income of low-income workers.

While protectionists focus on the jobs their policies save, they overlook the greater harm to other parts of society. The steel tariffs implemented by the Bush administration in 2002-2003 were found to have caused a loss of 168,000 jobs in industries that used steel as an input, exceeding the total employment in the entire steel industry. The washing machine tariffs from Trump's first administration created 1,800 jobs, but each job cost consumers up to $820,000.

Given the nature of the American economy, none of this is surprising. Protectionists seem to believe that manufacturing constitutes a large portion of the national workforce. However, only 8% of the non-farm workforce is engaged in manufacturing, far below half of what it was in the early 1990s. Even when focusing on less-educated populations, such jobs are far from the majority. As of 2015, only 16% of men without a bachelor's degree worked in manufacturing, down from 37% in 1960. Therefore, even ignoring women and all those with higher education, most people do not actually hold the type of jobs that free trade opponents are trying to protect and nurture.

So, on what basis should national policy sacrifice the interests of everyone else to help a tiny minority of the public, or even a tiny minority of the working class? The oddity of anti-trade conservatives is that they rarely focus on the other sacrifices the wealthy could make for the poor. For them, the most straightforward approach is to call for higher taxes on the rich and strengthen redistribution. This way, they can focus on those most able to pay, rather than taxing everyone (which disproportionately affects the poor) to help a tiny minority. I am not advocating for redistribution, but rather saying that if that is your goal, then restricting trade is not the way to achieve it.

Given the overwhelming empirical evidence of the impact of tariffs and the existing structure of the American economy, many people's strong attachment to protectionist policies must have psychological reasons. Evolutionary psychology provides the answer. First, we evolved in a world of zero-sum competition between individuals and groups. In the absence of a developed market economy, outsiders could only benefit from your tribe at the expense of your tribe.

President Trump explicitly expressed this view when he said that trade deficits mean we are "losing" money to foreigners. This, of course, makes no sense. I buy things in stores because both parties believe that voluntary trade serves their respective interests. Notably, conservative intellectuals, as well as a broader swath of Americans, rarely hold such strong views in economic areas outside of trade and immigration. According to Trump's worldview, shouldn't every scenario with buyers and sellers be seen as some sort of scam? Hardly anyone understands economics in this way, indicating that the involvement of foreigners alters people's perceptions of interactions.

In addition to zero-sum thinking, another relevant aspect of evolutionary psychology is how we view the nature of work. As mentioned earlier, protectionists tend to overestimate the value of manufacturing jobs while also overestimating our economy's dependence on these jobs. But why is it seen as a loss when a person transitions from factory work to becoming a barber or a rideshare driver, even if the new job may pay more? Why do American protectionists seem to envy countries like China and Vietnam, where a higher proportion of the workforce is engaged in manufacturing, yet are far poorer than we are?

The answer must again trace back to the distant past and how it has shaped our contemporary brains. As hunter-gatherers and later farmers, we could see that those who built houses or made fishing spears clearly contributed to society. Manufacturing workers are the modern equivalent, producing goods that people can see and touch.

The rise of the service economy is a recent phenomenon. For most of human history, nearly all labor was related to survival—hunting, gathering, agriculture, or tool-making. Even in the early industrial period, most workers were making things. But in the past century, developed economies have undergone tremendous changes. Today, the vast majority of workers in countries like the United States are engaged in the service sector, including healthcare, education, finance, hospitality, and software development. The productivity of these roles is often abstract, making their social value harder for most people to grasp.

Notably, like manufacturing, agriculture is often romanticized and protected, perhaps because it has a pre-modern counterpart. Like factories, farms evoke images of hard physical labor, subsistence, and independence. The aesthetic preference for such work is deeply rooted in our collective psyche. However, the structure of modern work has changed. Manufacturing and agriculture now account for only a small portion of the economy in developed countries.

Today, most Americans do not produce tangible goods. They provide care, solve problems, create knowledge, or facilitate transactions. These jobs are just as real and valuable as factory work, but lack the intuitive, visible output that our brains are shaped to value. Therefore, nostalgia for manufacturing is not based on economic logic or ethical clarity, but rather an instinctive bias towards the forms of labor our ancestors engaged in.

Of course, emotions are important in politics. Nevertheless, it is crucial to recognize when we are driven by psychological illusions. One might argue that the path to happiness is to indulge our natural instincts, building a closed economy that allows more people to manufacture tangible goods, even if it leads to a collapse in our standard of living. However, protectionists rarely make such arguments—there is good reason for that. Once you understand the nature of these biases and their irrationality, the arguments against trade fall apart.

This is why protectionists argue instead that their policies will economically benefit the nation or at least transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. The correct response is that their assumptions are fundamentally incorrect. Rather than erecting trade barriers or trying to resurrect a long-gone employment landscape, we should consider how best to support existing workers, rather than the workers we imagine. This means supporting a flexible labor market, higher-quality training and education, and removing unreasonable barriers to earning a living, such as occupational licensing.

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